


Hardly Dead At All

by Anna_Hopkins



Series: Dollfics [3]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Crack Treated Seriously, Dark Crack, Dead Voldemort, Gen, M/M, Mild Necrophilia, Obsession, Obsessive Harry Potter, Post-Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-06-01
Updated: 2020-06-01
Packaged: 2021-03-02 17:07:51
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,545
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24490300
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Anna_Hopkins/pseuds/Anna_Hopkins
Summary: Per regulations on bodies studied by the Department of Mysteries, several months after the Battle of Hogwarts, the Unspeakables release custody of Voldemort's corpse into the possession of Harry Potter.
Relationships: Harry Potter & Voldemort, Harry Potter/Voldemort
Series: Dollfics [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1755148
Comments: 7
Kudos: 144





	Hardly Dead At All

**Author's Note:**

  * For [kharmachaos](https://archiveofourown.org/users/kharmachaos/gifts).



_ In accordance with Regulation 108.13, Article 12, of Ministry of Magic policy, the Department of Mysteries hereby releases custody on this day, the 31st July, 1998, of research specimen 3-12-980601 to its rightful owner... _

Harry looked up from the parchment at the two Unspeakables in the sitting room of Number Twelve, Grimmauld Place. They stood, hands clasped behind their backs, and watched him intently from under the dark veils which just barely obscured their faces from view. "Just to be clear," he asked weakly, "if I sign this form, you'll be giving me..."

"The body of the wizard formerly known as Lord Voldemort," confirmed the wizard on the left.

Harry sagged back against the wall, skimming the document for the third time. His question had been redundant, really, when silhouetted against the fire, laid out on the rug behind these unwelcome visitors, was a distinctively shaped box covered by black fabric - its purpose, its contents, unmistakable. "What a birthday gift," he muttered under his breath.

He flipped to the last page and signed on the line.

"The Department of Mysteries thanks you for your cooperation," recited the wizard who had spoken before, and he and his companion departed the way they came - and Harry was alone with.. the box.

He could not say how long he stood there, staring at it; only that he was jolted from his impromptu vigil by Kreacher's rekindling of the cooled ash in the hearth, the lighting of the wall sconces. Night had fallen.

Harry swallowed, clenching chilled fists at his sides. With the firelight's flickering as its primary illumination, the wall sconces still sputtering into their dim flames, the scene before him was even more unsettling. Only when he took a first step closer did he recognize the emotion twisting his stomach in knots.

It was how he'd felt when he first gazed upon the Veil, in his fifth year - before he'd understood what it was. A thing which looked benign, barely, just enough to belie its true and terrible nature.  _ If only this were just a cursed Egyptian coffin. _

Reaching for the fabric to draw it back sent a chill up his arm that grew into a full-body shudder. Harry swallowed again; he could hear his heart pounding, see his hand trembling, and then there was smooth, silken material under his fingers, heavier than he'd have expected it to be when he took hold of one corner to pull it back, and underneath-

A simple wooden box, lacquered and polished, a brass latch on the long side facing him that implied hinges of the same metal on the other.

_ Breathe, Harry, _ he told himself.  _ It's dead. He's dead. _

Numb fingers fumbled with the latch. Harry briefly detached himself from the moment - but that brought back too many memories of times he'd actually looked through someone else's eyes, and he scrunched his eyes shut until he was fully present. There was a moment in which he fully expected something to happen when he touched the metal - but no. The latch unlocked with a click, its loose half knocking against the wood.  _ I've gotten this far, may as well,  _ Harry thought, and carefully lifted the lid.

The rest of the fabric cover slid off with a hiss to pool on the floor opposite Harry's position by the box. He barely noticed, so surprised was he at what he found inside.

What had he expected? The Department of Mysteries had taken the body for research shortly after the last battle, after all: perhaps a bunch of pieces, haphazardly stitched back together (or worse, tossed in a pile, bagged in plastic like a Muggle morgue)? A skeleton, all the flesh stripped away, the way he'd once imagined of his Firebolt when the school staff told him they'd be stripping the enchantments to make sure it wasn't cursed? Harry had certainly not pictured the perfectly unblemished body lying in repose against black satin, nude save for a drape of the fabric across its hips.

It.. didn't even smell. Harry had seen Dumbledore's body sink in on itself over time despite the preservation magic on his tomb; Voldemort had been dead for longer, and his body had done none of that. He looked asleep.

"Was he even alive enough to die?" Harry wondered quietly. "What with the ritual and all.."

And what exactly was he supposed to do with it? Why had they even given this to him? Why not just incinerate it when they were finished?

He could.. put it in the attic with all the other cursed and terrible things in the house? Prop it up in a corner to prank Ron the next time he came over? Harry scrubbed his face with his hand. "Am I supposed to  _ bury  _ you?" he asked Voldemort, perturbed.

Being dead, the Dark Lord didn't answer.

Harry took dinner in the sitting room from a bemused but oddly compliant Kreacher when he realized his stomach was rumbling, watching the shadows flicker across Voldemort's face in the firelight. He looked too alive to be trusted not to do something if left alone.

An elegant solution presented itself, or perhaps had been there all along, when the clock chimed for nine p.m. - he set aside his empty plate, stood up from his chair, and simply.. closed the lid. He locked the latch, and replaced the fabric atop the box, tugging it into as perfectly even an arrangement as he could, and called for Kreacher again.

"Can you put this somewhere else in the house?"

Just like that, the box was gone. Harry could have sworn the room got warmer immediately after. Satisfied with that, even if a small part of him itched to secure the box further, with chains and Muggle superglue and locking charms on top, he rolled his shoulders and made his way upstairs to his bedroom and its attached bathroom for a shower hot enough to turn his skin pink. The heat soaked through to his bones, like a Patronus chasing off dementors, leaving Harry smiling to himself as he went to turn in for the night.

Stepping out of his bathrobe, Harry drew back the curtain on his four-poster bed-

And most certainly Did Not Shriek.

"KREACHER!" he shouted. "Why did you put - _him_ - in my BED?!"

He'd thought they were past this kind of petty bullshit - it had been more than a month, he'd learned table etiquette and everything like the elf had wanted.

The old house-elf blinked rheumy eyes at him, turning to look at the white body draped in Harry's black sheets. (He could have sworn they'd been white with blue stripes today.) "A good house-elf is anticipating the Master's desires without needing to be ordered," Kreacher said.

"What- what kind of  _ desires-" _ Harry shuddered. "I'm not a bloody necrophiliac! Get this out of my bed!"

"Kreacher suggests that the Master may be comforted in the knowledge that his enemy lies defeated close at hand."

Frustrated, Harry sat down on the edge of the bed, sending his most withering glare at the elf. "This is not at all comforting," he told Kreacher. "I don't know how I'm going to sleep here. I  _ shouldn't _ sleep here, in fact."

"Kreacher will prepare a new room for the Master's enemy in the morning."

"That doesn't solve the problem of him being here  _ right now. _ Why in Merlin's name are you being so pushy?"

A slow blink. "House-elves are not meant to be holding extended conversations with the Master," Kreacher informed him, in the same tone he'd used to correct Harry's choice of utensil at a three-course meal or reprimand him for using Muggle swears. More quietly, Kreacher added, "Kreacher is hoping that the Master will ease his loneliness with someone else."

"But he's  _ dead!" _

Kreacher popped away, leaving Harry there with the body, and did not return even when he called for him.

"What the fuck," Harry whispered. "What the  _ fuck." _

Harry looked over his shoulder at the body. It hadn't moved an inch from its original position, because it was dead.

He considered his options, kicking his heels against the bedskirt. On the one hand, he could just levitate the body out of the room and leave it on the floor outside the door, or in an adjacent guestroom, or in a Transfigured box (since Kreacher had evidently left the box it came in somewhere else). It would take five minutes, ten if he wanted to put it somewhere especially far away from him.

..And then he'd spend the next few hours worrying about it doing something weird somehow, out of sight, and not get a wink of sleep.

_ Shit. _ Kreacher was kind of right.

On the other hand, Harry thought, repositioning himself on the mattress, if he just left Voldemort where he was on the far end of the bed, and ignored that he was there, such as by pulling the sheets up over most of him and turning on his side to face away from the body, he'd still be disconcerted, but at least the sheets would be comfortable,  _ wow, these really are nice, _ nicer than Harry usually put on his bed, and the pillow was just right under his head when he laid down, and..

Harry fell asleep.


End file.
